Will Franken: The Stuff They Put In Sleep, Maidenhead & London

There is nothing straightforward about a Will Franken show. From the moment the curtain goes up, you’re met with an impossible flurry of peculiar characters and absurd silly voices. A veteran of the New York improv scene, Franken’s now made his home in the UK, where he’s found an appreciative audience for his always experimental, frequently thought-provoking and occasionally ground-breaking comedy. If what you’re looking for is soundbite-sized gags, this may not be your cup of tea because, while Franken certainly has the writing chops and love of language to mint a crisp one-liner, what he’s best at is crafting dizzying spirals of highly intellectual nonsense that start in one place and finish in another having stopped off at every conceivable destination in between. So, if you’re up for having your cerebral cortex gently remodelled by the power of comedy, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here.

Sarah Kendall: Touchdown, Cambridge

Sarah Kendall is a particular type of confessional comic. When she opens herself up, it isn’t to overwhelm the audience with tearful tales of horrendous life experiences. What she does do is speak candidly about her personal foibles in a way that invites us to judge her, but makes us laugh too much to bother. In her previous full-length show, Kendall overturned the cliches of nurturing motherhood to bring us the frank truth about bringing up young children: that it can frequently be an anxiety-inducing nightmare and can make you wish you’d never embarked on the whole project in the first place. This new show sees Kendall mining her embarrassing teenage years for comic pickings. Touchdown is set in the world of under-14s womens’ touch rugby, and uses adolescent gawkiness as a jumping-off point for a series of highly relatable and excruciatingly embarrassing tales.

Romesh Ranganathan: Rom Wasn’t Built In A Day, On tour

Say what you like about panel shows’ place in TV comedy, but they’re certainly a great way to identify sharp comics with immediate mainstream appeal. Romesh Ranganathan is a case in point: he made a spectacular solo debut on the fringe last year and has long been highly rated by the tastemakers, but his recent show-stealing appearances on Mock The Week look set to kick his career into a whole new gear. He specialises in a kind of deadpan pisstaking but where he also scores is in his breadth of reference: unlike many of his young peers who’ve rolled straight out of university into comedy, he’s had a proper job (as a teacher) and already has a family, all of which proves a rich source of material, before you even get into the racial politics from which he gains some of his biggest laughs.